Samsung Galaxy Watch vs Gear Sport

Design and specifications

The Galaxy Watch and the Gear Sport are two Tizen OS-powered smartwatches by Samsung, launched a year apart. So one would surely imagine them to carry certain similarities, and they do too. Both the watches feature Samsung’s signatory rotating bezel placed gently over the circular dial, giving them a classic look. But still, the Galaxy Watch is a bit more appealing to look at, thanks to the analog watch ticks and hourly chimes.

Unlike Gear Sport, the Galaxy Watch comes in two different sizes, 46mm and 42mm. The two variants differ in screen size and battery capacity, and effectively, battery life. The 46mm model packs a 472mAh battery, capable of running the watch for 80+ hours on normal use. The 42mm model, however, packs a much smaller battery of size 270mAh, which runs the watch for 45+ hours on a single charge. The Gear Sport, meanwhile, is available only in 42mm size, and packs a 300mAh battery.

Both the Galaxy Watch and Gear Sport feature the same display panel, a 1.2-inch (1.3-inch in 46mm Galaxy Watch) 360 x 360 AMOLED touchscreen. They also boast the same RAM size and storage space, 768MB and 4GB respectively. However, the Galaxy Watch is powered by a new Exynos 9110 Dual core 1.15GHz processor, bringing in significant performance boost to the watch.

Features

Despite the watches packing different processors, and running two different versions of the Tizen OS, they offer pretty much the same set of features. You’ve got access to the same apps, watch faces, and user interface. The only significant change is Bixby Voice replacing S Voice as the digital assistant, and a much improved Samsung Health. Galaxy Watch sees the addition of a bunch of new indoor exercises, along with a new stress management tracker and an advanced sleep tracker. But considering the trend of Samsung pushing-out software updates to its wearable tech, the Gear Sport might catch-up in these two areas soon.

Both the watches come with built-in GPS for mapping your runs and NFC for mobile payments via Samsung Pay. However, if you want your smartwatch to be able to receive notifications and make calls without having to connect with a smartphone, only the Galaxy Watch has an LTE model.

Bottom line

A huge battery, and LTE support makes the Galaxy Watch the go-to Samsung smartwatch right now. However, if you’re okay with charging your watch almost every other night, and don’t really need LTE support, you get almost the same features for a much much less price. The Galaxy Watch without LTE costs $330 ($350 for 46mm), whereas the Gear Sport costs $255 only. For LTE-enabled Galaxy Watch, you need to pay an extra $50, taking the total to a whopping $380 ($400 for 46mm).

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